Friday, 9 August 2013

In December 2011, Surya Subedi, the U.N.’s human rights envoy for
Cambodia, visited the country to assess state institutions relevant to
the electoral process.

He concluded in a report released to the U.N.’s General Assembly in
July 2012 that major electoral reforms were needed to maintain peace and
stability in the country.

“If the electoral process is unable to command the trust and
confidence of the electorate, the very foundation of the Cambodian
political and constitutional architecture embodied in the Paris Peace
Agreements will be shaken and the country may run the risk of a return
to violence,” Mr. Subedi said in the report.

–News Analysis

At the center of his concerns was the National Election Committee
(NEC), the nine-member government body entrusted with ensuring that the
will of the people is reflected in the outcome of elections.

“The National Election Commit­tee should be reformed so as to have independent and autonomous status,” the report says.

In order to achieve this, Mr. Subedi suggested that there be a
consensus among political parties in the National Assembly on the appointment
of the president and members of the NEC and pro­vincial election
committees and said “New judicial bodies and mechanisms must be
established outside the NEC in order to re­solve election-related
disputes properly.”

His report was prophetic.

A year later, the NEC, which is stacked with members loyal to Prime
Minister Hun Sen’s ruling CPP, finds itself at the center of an
election-related dispute that requires a resolution.

Analysts and election monitors say if violence were to occur in the
aftermath of the election, it would be the result of the government’s
failure to implement Mr. Subedi’s recommendations.

“The root cause of this problem is they [Mr. Hun Sen’s
administration] did not respect the recommendations of the U.N.
rapporteur. This would be the root cause of the violence,” said Kem Ley,
an independent political analyst.

“And the underlying causes of the violence [are that] they don’t want to improve voter registration, they don’t want to improve integrity of [the] voter list, they don’t want to improve the system of the election,” he added.

Thun Saray, chairman of the Committee for Free
and Fair Elections in Cambodia’s (Comfrel) board of directors, said
that unless the NEC allows an independent body to participate in the
investigation of alleged election fraud on July 28, a peaceful solution
to the current political impasse would be unlikely.

“If we don’t broaden the composition [of the election investigation
committee], the CNRP will not accept [the election results], and if the
CNRP doesn’t accept, it is because from the beginning to now they don’t
trust the NEC or the results from the CPP. [The NEC] has to facilitate
discussions between [the] two parties to find a compromise,” Mr. Saray
said.

“If we can do that, we have a hope to solve the problem and avoid violent conflict in the near future,” he added.

Despite what the opposition alleges was selective removal of
thousands of CNRP supporters from voter lists and widespread election
fraud engineered by the CPP on polling day, the CNRP won 44.5 percent of
the popular vote, according to preliminary NEC results.

Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha, the leaders of the opposition movement,
have now said they will accept nothing less than victory and the removal
of Mr. Hun Sen from power. They have also threatened, as a last resort,
to hold nationwide protests and boycott the National Assembly if an
independent investigation of election irregularities is not conducted
outside of the authority of the NEC.

The CNRP has called for the U.N. to take the role of arbitrator in a
multi-party committee, which would include the NEC and the CPP, tasked
with investigating the electoral process—from voter registration, which
was overseen largely by CPP-loyal commune and village chiefs, to the
NEC’s ballot counting at polling stations.

Still, the NEC has pushed ahead with a timetable that will allow for
only five days of investigations, which started Wednes­day, into
election irregularities before releasing official preliminary results,
which can be appealed to the Constitutional Council of Cambodia, another
body widely considered to be CPP-aligned. The NEC has also refused
calls from the CNRP and civil society groups to release documents that
would allow for independent election monitors to investigate cases of
possible identity fraud and election irregularities.

NEC Secretary-General Tep Nytha said Thursday that a three-member
subcommittee, overseen by Mr. Nytha, would be charged with reviewing 14
reports of electoral misconduct that have been filed with his committee
since August 2. Seven reports were submitted by the CNRP, the CPP
submitted four, Funcinpec lodged two and one report came from a local
authority.

“We will bring the reports before political parties and civil society
groups in order to get comments from them on what we should do to
settle the cases within the reports,” Mr. Nytha said. He added that the
three-member NEC committee was up to the task of conducting a thorough
in­vestigation of all 14 reports before this weekend is over.

“I don’t think the subcommittee needs to do field investigations.
That is why we will meet with representatives from political parties and
civil society to collect information so that we can contact election
officials at the local level to find out whether such allegations
occurred in that area,” Mr. Nytha said.

“After consolidating [the reports], there are only a few cases to be discussed this weekend,” he said.

This investigation process, including the 48 hours reserved for
deliberation by the NEC, will be completed before official preliminary
election results are released by Monday, according to Mr. Nytha.

Yim Sovann, spokesman for the CNRP, said that the opposition party
has not decided whether it will attend the weekend meeting to discuss
the complaints, but he was sure that the NEC’s investigation would not
be sufficient for the CNRP and its supporters to accept the subsequent
results.

“[The subcommittee] doesn’t work for us at all. We do not trust the
NEC anymore. We don’t want to talk about this, we want to talk about
creating a commission that can solve the problem impartially and
independently,” Mr. Sovann said.

Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said that the
CNRP’s refusal to accept the results of the election went against the
will of the Cambodian people. He also said that proposed demonstrations
would be treated by authorities as “riots” against the government.

“They have to adhere to the rule of law. The campaign period is over.
There was a clear result of the voting. Now one must talk about
democratic rule of law and respect it,” he said.

“We have a good mechanism and are competent enough to take care [of
disagreements] in the National Assembly rather than…incite people to go
on the streets and hold demonstrations that become a riot,” he said.

Whatever happens, the NEC could still play a pivotal role in bringing
together the CPP and CNRP for discussions on how to move forward before
the CNRP resorts to demonstrations, said Sok Sam Oeun, a lawyer and
member of the board of Comfrel.

“The NEC must facilitate talks between both parties and then listen
to them. The situation is not only about both parties but the people,
especially the people who support the CNRP. That is why both parties
must talk again so that they can calm the people down,” he said.

“The people do not believe the NEC, so I think only by forming a
committee and opening a transparent investigation can they avoid a
demonstration.”

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